Breathe
By Lourdes Encinas
In the wake of the #MeToo movement and the new feminist wave, a growing ideological divide began to emerge between young men and women that is reshaping geopolitics. While women are adopting more progressive positions and openly expressing their opinions, many men, feeling threatened, are reacting with more conservative positions.
This polarization has been exploited by ultraconservative movements, particularly in the manosphere: a network of websites, forums, social networks and video game platforms where toxic masculinity and misogynistic attitudes are promoted, as well illustrated by the Netflix miniseries Adolescence.
Driven by algorithms, resentment towards gender policies is growing among a segment of young men who perceive female advancement as a personal loss. Simultaneously, a narrative that blames women, migrants and other minorities for the economic precariousness of today's youth takes hold.
The result is a marked ideological gap in Generation Z: men tend toward the conservative right, while women lean to the progressive left. In Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom and South Korea, this gap reaches between 20% and 30% in the 18-29 year-old population, according to a 2024 Financial Times survey. This phenomenon is unprecedented, as never before has the ideological difference between genders been so pronounced.
The gap is already influencing election results, and is identified as a factor in the global democratic backlash. In Germany, for example, 25% of young men (18-24 years old) voted for the far-right Alternative for Germany, compared to only 14% of women in the same age range. In contrast, the liberal Linke party won 34% of the young female vote and just 15% of the male vote.
The situation in Mexico
The national panorama presents different nuances. According to an analysis by El País with data from Latinobarómetro 2024, Mexico has remained in the center, with a certain tendency to the left in the last two decades. The Mexican electorate was on the center-right in 2000 and 2006, remained to the center in 2012, and since 2015 began to turn to the left. In 2018, it voted mostly for the center-left option, with no significant differences between genders.
Unlike the global trend, the ideological gender gap in Mexico is observed mainly in the older age groups (25-59 years), and not among the youngest.
This coincides with the study "Gender gap in voting: the Mexican elections of 2024 in comparative perspective", presented last April 2 by Dr. Caroline Beer at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO), Mexico. In its preliminary results, the study shows that in the 2021 mid-term federal elections, male voting intention favored Morena in all age groups, especially among young people.
However, in 2024 the trend was reversed: women overwhelmingly supported Morena, with the gap disappearing among young voters, but widening significantly in older age groups, with a difference of up to 22 points among people aged 65 and over.
A key question is whether Mexico is moving towards a modern gender gap similar to the global trend or whether the observed change was mainly due to the fact that the dominant party's candidate was a woman.
Data from the FLACSO survey included in the study show that women who supported Claudia Sheinbaum paradoxically responded affirmatively to questions such as "Do you consider that men are better leaders than women?" and "Do you consider that domestic violence should be addressed only in the private sphere?", suggesting that they are women with less feminist attitudes and that their vote could be more linked to party than to a support for progressive policies.
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